This document describes results from the OHI 2018 global assessment. This is mostly an internal document to explore and check results. It also creates the figures used on the website and in other documents.
Primary dataset
These data are the OHI scores for the eez regions of 220 countries and territories from 2012 to 2018.
Region 0 is the global average scores, which are calculated using an area-weighted average of the region scores (status, likely future state, and score).
OHI scores
Global summary
This section describes global patterns in index and goal scores. The overall global score was 70.15.
Average global performance of the 10 goals.
Flower plots for each region can be downloaded from here
Country summary
Country index scores for 2018. Maps describing goal and index scores can be downloaded from here.
Distribution of country index scores. The median index score among countries was 67.17.

The regions with index scores of 80 or greater are:
| Heard and McDonald Islands |
90.27 |
| Kerguelen Islands |
89.93 |
| Howland Island and Baker Island |
89.60 |
| Pitcairn |
84.92 |
| Germany |
84.86 |
| Macquarie Island |
84.37 |
| Norfolk Island |
84.25 |
| South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands |
83.86 |
| Aruba |
83.04 |
| Christmas Island |
82.76 |
| New Caledonia |
82.22 |
| Jan Mayen |
81.14 |
| Jarvis Island |
80.69 |
| Phoenix Islands (Kiribati) |
80.67 |
| Madeira |
80.48 |
| Northern Saint-Martin |
80.12 |
| Cocos Islands |
80.00 |
The regions with index scores of 50 or less are:
| Guinea |
49.60 |
| Guinea Bissau |
48.57 |
| Syria |
48.41 |
| Somalia |
48.23 |
| Sierra Leone |
47.53 |
| Democratic Republic of the Congo |
47.15 |
| Lebanon |
46.25 |
| Nicaragua |
45.30 |
| Libya |
42.41 |
| Ivory Coast |
41.37 |
Country scores across scenario year
This carpet plot figure (download as high resolution png) provides an overview of the scores from the 2018 assessment. Each row represents a region, the main groupings represent goals, and within each goal there are 6 years of data. Black regions indicate no data.

Don’t try too hard to interpret the results for specific countries/goals/years!!
This plot is good for providing a quick overview of:
- What is the range of scores?
- Which goals tend to have high scores across most regions (species, habitat)
- Which goals have a lot of variation across regions (tourism & recreation, lasting special places)
- Which goals are volatile across years (natural products, tourism & recreation)
Data
This interactive table describes the index and goal scores for the regions in 2018 (or, download csv version):
OHI Trends
Trend values are slope estimates from a linear model of scores for each region/goal over the past 7 years. Positive values indicate increasing scores during the past 7 years and negative values indicate decreasing scores.
A color-coded table of trend values for each country is available here (as well as a csv file).
NOTE: Currently, these data include the livelihoods and economies goal but these results should be viewed sceptically because these data were last updated for the 2013 assessment. Many other goals contain components with poor data resolution (i.e., infrequently, or never, measured over time).
Global summary
The following table provides the global scores (eez area weighted average of region scores) for the Index and goals/subgoals for all years.
Table View
| Index |
70.19 |
70.90 |
71.03 |
70.80 |
70.47 |
70.19 |
70.15 |
| Artisanal opportunities |
76.67 |
77.01 |
77.28 |
77.37 |
77.46 |
77.57 |
77.78 |
| Species condition (subgoal) |
83.75 |
83.59 |
83.48 |
83.36 |
83.30 |
83.18 |
83.08 |
| Biodiversity |
87.13 |
87.07 |
87.26 |
87.27 |
87.29 |
87.11 |
87.14 |
| Habitat (subgoal) |
90.54 |
90.57 |
91.07 |
91.22 |
91.30 |
91.07 |
91.22 |
| Coastal protection |
88.53 |
88.04 |
88.02 |
87.81 |
87.44 |
86.64 |
86.32 |
| Carbon storage |
79.16 |
79.09 |
79.12 |
79.12 |
79.16 |
79.18 |
79.19 |
| Clean water |
70.97 |
70.62 |
70.75 |
71.02 |
71.08 |
71.20 |
71.28 |
| Fisheries (subgoal) |
54.52 |
56.14 |
56.12 |
53.69 |
51.74 |
50.63 |
50.96 |
| Food provision |
54.26 |
55.71 |
55.68 |
53.36 |
51.60 |
50.41 |
50.77 |
| Mariculture (subgoal) |
21.25 |
21.68 |
22.42 |
23.74 |
24.45 |
24.65 |
25.17 |
| Iconic species (subgoal) |
66.40 |
67.52 |
67.60 |
67.60 |
66.60 |
66.48 |
66.55 |
| Sense of place |
62.04 |
62.56 |
62.93 |
63.05 |
62.80 |
63.62 |
63.67 |
| Lasting special places (subgoal) |
57.68 |
57.61 |
58.26 |
58.50 |
58.99 |
60.76 |
60.80 |
| Natural products |
51.55 |
51.47 |
51.20 |
49.77 |
48.49 |
45.84 |
45.44 |
| Tourism & recreation |
50.28 |
52.20 |
52.69 |
53.84 |
53.83 |
54.34 |
53.64 |
The following is a very preliminary analysis of how the global scores changed over time. Global index scores decreased by an average -0.07 points per year, with 112 regions having decreasing trends and 109 having increasing trends.
| Natural products |
-1.15 |
0.0008 |
52 |
86 |
-2.03 |
7.45 |
| Fisheries (subgoal) |
-0.93 |
0.0124 |
111 |
108 |
-0.55 |
1.96 |
| Food provision |
-0.90 |
0.0108 |
106 |
111 |
-0.58 |
1.99 |
| Coastal protection |
-0.36 |
0.0004 |
25 |
81 |
-0.09 |
0.53 |
| Species condition (subgoal) |
-0.11 |
0.0000 |
31 |
187 |
-0.16 |
0.17 |
| Iconic species (subgoal) |
-0.09 |
0.4364 |
74 |
139 |
-0.09 |
0.34 |
| Index |
-0.07 |
0.3315 |
109 |
111 |
-0.10 |
0.75 |
| Biodiversity |
0.01 |
0.7958 |
75 |
142 |
-0.08 |
0.48 |
| Carbon storage |
0.01 |
0.1095 |
43 |
54 |
-0.01 |
0.08 |
| Livelihoods |
0.07 |
0.1136 |
75 |
69 |
-0.05 |
1.09 |
| Clean water |
0.09 |
0.0331 |
104 |
105 |
-0.01 |
0.86 |
| Habitat (subgoal) |
0.12 |
0.0299 |
77 |
80 |
0.00 |
0.88 |
| Artisanal opportunities |
0.17 |
0.0003 |
181 |
31 |
0.19 |
0.38 |
| Sense of place |
0.25 |
0.0029 |
91 |
123 |
0.11 |
0.95 |
| Livelihoods & economies |
0.38 |
0.1362 |
133 |
42 |
0.25 |
0.94 |
| Tourism & recreation |
0.55 |
0.0141 |
119 |
65 |
0.59 |
2.20 |
| Lasting special places (subgoal) |
0.59 |
0.0014 |
66 |
45 |
0.31 |
1.89 |
| Economies |
0.70 |
0.1392 |
116 |
21 |
0.55 |
1.26 |
| Mariculture (subgoal) |
0.70 |
0.0001 |
54 |
44 |
0.10 |
1.50 |
Country summary
The global average decreased by an average of -0.07 points per year, but there was a good deal of variation in trend among regions and goals.
The following histogram describes the distribution of trend (e.g., change in score per year) in index scores:

The 10 regions with the largest increases in index scores are:
| Georgia |
2.33 |
| Latvia |
1.65 |
| Pitcairn |
1.53 |
| Samoa |
1.37 |
| Tonga |
1.34 |
| Bangladesh |
1.30 |
| Solomon Islands |
1.28 |
| Portugal |
1.22 |
| Turks and Caicos Islands |
1.21 |
| Myanmar |
1.19 |
The 10 regions with the largest decreases in index scores are:
| 211 |
Sint Eustatius |
-1.55 |
| 212 |
Ile Tromelin |
-1.69 |
| 213 |
Amsterdam Island and Saint Paul Island |
-1.73 |
| 214 |
Sint Maarten |
-1.75 |
| 215 |
Syria |
-1.84 |
| 216 |
Trinidad and Tobago |
-1.91 |
| 217 |
Marshall Islands |
-2.08 |
| 218 |
Mayotte |
-2.11 |
| 219 |
Equatorial Guinea |
-2.15 |
| 220 |
Eritrea |
-3.05 |
Country change in goal
A heat map describing change in trend for country and goals (download png here).

A closer look at goals
This section takes a closer look at the goal/subgoal scores.
Scores
Goal/subgoal scores for the 2018 scenario.
Trends
Annual change in goal/subgoal scores calculated using a linear regression on scores from 2012 to 2018.
Other analyses
Comparing trend and average index scores
To obtain a more complete picture of which regions are doing well and which are doing poorly we compared the average index scores (averaged over 2012 to 2018) and the trends for each region.
Of most concern are regions that have poor scores and declining trends: Eritrea, Somalia, Ivory Coast, Nicaragua, and Lebanon.
The following is an interactive plot (region names are visible when hovering over the points) showing the relationship between average index scores and trend. The horizontal line represents the 0 trend and the vertical line is the average of the average index scores.
Comparing assessment years
The following is a comparison of the global status scores generated for the 2017 scenario by this year’s assessment vs. last year’s assessment.
If the models and source data remain the same, these scores should be exactly the same. Differences indicate changes in methods or source data.
These changes do not reflect changes in actual system health!
We made a few changes to some goals, such as the addition of edible seaweed species to Mariculture and removal of edible seaweed species from Natural Products. Furthermore we changed the data source used for Fisheries from SAUP to Watson. We also had fairly large changes to how we process species data.
| Artisanal opportunities |
-0.4954545 |
1.2311364 |
-1.6782273 |
-0.2939545 |
-0.0918182 |
-0.0000455 |
| Biodiversity |
-1.8171818 |
NaN |
NaN |
-4.0684545 |
-6.3202727 |
0.0853636 |
| Carbon storage |
-0.0735811 |
0.3076351 |
0.0475676 |
-0.0373649 |
0.0000000 |
0.0000000 |
| Clean water |
-1.3482727 |
0.5300000 |
-0.2063636 |
-1.5169091 |
-1.6850455 |
0.0071364 |
| Coastal protection |
0.4400599 |
0.8816471 |
0.0984706 |
0.4493413 |
0.4585030 |
0.0148993 |
| Economies |
-0.1488235 |
0.9010900 |
-0.2546364 |
-0.0739706 |
0.0000000 |
0.0000000 |
| Fisheries (subgoal) |
-0.5888182 |
0.7211364 |
-2.9127273 |
-0.1580909 |
0.2731818 |
-0.0213182 |
| Food provision |
-0.5067123 |
NaN |
NaN |
-0.0638356 |
0.3789498 |
-0.0230137 |
| Habitat (subgoal) |
-0.4005046 |
-0.3943119 |
-2.3463761 |
-0.3071560 |
-0.2144037 |
-0.0005556 |
| Iconic species (subgoal) |
-0.8225455 |
0.2761364 |
-3.0646364 |
-0.1530000 |
0.5159091 |
-0.0182791 |
| Index |
0.4667727 |
NA |
NA |
0.0833182 |
NA |
NA |
| Lasting special places (subgoal) |
1.9970909 |
0.2061818 |
-0.2063182 |
1.8979545 |
1.7989545 |
0.0203636 |
| Livelihoods |
-0.0564706 |
0.2798104 |
-0.1883182 |
-0.0279902 |
-0.0001961 |
-0.0001471 |
| Livelihoods & economies |
-0.1025000 |
NaN |
NaN |
-0.0518627 |
0.0000980 |
-0.0010294 |
| Mariculture (subgoal) |
0.9504000 |
0.2067727 |
-0.2065000 |
0.8479200 |
0.7444800 |
-0.0067200 |
| Natural products |
-0.8830370 |
1.8421678 |
-2.1402797 |
-1.6939259 |
-2.5044444 |
0.0351111 |
| Sense of place |
0.5871364 |
NaN |
NaN |
0.8722727 |
1.1574545 |
0.0017273 |
| Species condition (subgoal) |
-3.1311818 |
0.6495000 |
0.1487727 |
-7.6876818 |
-12.2450000 |
0.1684091 |
| Tourism & recreation |
7.3245500 |
0.4002727 |
-0.2063636 |
5.7404500 |
4.1567500 |
0.1499500 |
Country data
The following interactive plot provides an overview of how the 2017 scenario scores changed between the 2017 and 2018 assessment for all goals and dimensions.
Additional exploration
Suggestions?